Nicole Zoltack's Blog, page 56

What Agents Are Looking For

I love to peruse agent's blogs to see what in particular they are looking for.



Kathleen Ortiz is looking for YA, MG, and adult fiction.



YA: romances with a male POV, cyberpunk, thriller, historical romance (not WWI, WWII, medieval), apocalyptic (not pre or post)



MG: adventure, travel, boy book, something with a technology slant, steampunk





Adult romance (paranormal, urban fantasy, contemporary)





Women's fiction





Jessica Faust is looking for steampunk, historical mysteries, contemporary romance, big fantasy romance, historical romances, and dystopian. She is still looking for great mysteries, romances, fantasy, women's fiction as well, but the first list is what she's most excited to read right now.





Jill Corcoran is looking for romance, especially romantic comedies, original paranormal MG and YA, MG about middle school (7th-8th grade), literary with a commercial hook, and commercial with literary prose.

A Look Back, and a Look Ahead

My calendar looks like this (except mine has pretty pictures) but I scribbling important information into the boxes, any plans or birthdays, upcoming deadlines, guest posts, etc. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to keep everything straight. Calendar's are a Godsend!
January's over. We're a month into 2011.



So what did I accomplish?



I finished Champion of Valor. I'm working on the cover sheet and will submit both in a couple hours.



I also wrote and submitted three picture books to a small publisher in Texas. Yesterday was their deadline for unsolicited fantasy and science fiction picture books.



I also have a secret project that I'll give more details about when I can.



Reading-wise, I've been devouring several reference books on creatures. I plan on changing my inspiring Mondays post for the next several weeks, and maybe longer, into different creatures and I'll explain some of their details and idiosyncrasies. I also read and finished the first three Sookie books. So far so good, although I liked the first one best, the others weren't quite as good.



Overall, a very productive month.



So what's up for February?



Well, I need to take a small step back from fiction and write as many nonfiction articles as I can. It'll be a huge boost for miscellaneous bills.



If you can keep a secret from hubby, I'll probably still write a little. What can I say? I'm a writer, it's my drug.



What did you accomplish in January? What are your goals for February?

Inspiring Mondays

Today's picture is of a Drow. Drow are dark-skinned elves that live underground. In Champion of Valor, they tend to be all about themselves and often clash with their underground neighbor, the dwarves.

Deadlines

Are you the kind of person who flourishes when a deadline is looking? Or do you panic and stress out and freak out instead of working?



I'm the former. I need deadlines. I need to have a goal, something that keeps me in line and focused. Without deadlines, I just flounder along, making excuses. A deadline wipes out my excuses and leaves me with nothing but work.



In case you can't tell, I'm on a deadline for Champion of Valor, so that's why this post is so short. Hope everything's going well for you all, whether you're working for a deadline or not!

Vampires should die... oh wait a second...

Vampires have been done to death... or have they?



Personally, I'll read just about anything. I'll read vampire stories and I don't think I'll get tired of reading them any time soon. And if you walk through a bookstore, you'll see vampire books everywhere.



That said, am I in the minority here? Are people sick of reading vampires stories? Or are you still reading them?



I've written a few short stories about vampires but not a novel. I'm trying to decide if I should write some more vampire shorts or shorts involving selkies. I'm leaning toward the vampires considering that one of the main characters in Champion of Valor is a selkie.



Which short stories would you be more like to read - vampires or selkies? Oh, I should mention that the vampires are more traditional vampires - horror, not romance. These vampires are creatures of the night. I vant to suck your blood and leave you to die kind of vampires.

Seriously Series

I like to read standalone novels but I also like to read series.



Growing up, I adored the Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley High. The Anne books. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings (although technically, LotR is just one really long book).



Since then, I've read many more series, including Harry Potter. Currently, I'm on book 3 of the Sookie books. I really liked the first book. The second is good but not as good as the first. So far, book 3 seems even more downhill.



Will I continue to read them? Yes. But why have they started to turn south on me? That's hard to say.



I've been thinking about series a lot lately as I'm working hard to finish up Champion of Valor, Book III in the Kingdom of Arnhem series. I want to tie up all the loose ends, develop the characters from the previous books further even while I balance introducing new characters and races. It's a balancing act.



I think with series, it's important to continually build. You have to have character growth in each book and throughout the series. Each book should be separate and yet when read together, there should be something more. There should be an overlying arch to the books in a series.



Do you like to read series? Why or why not? What's your favorite series? Mine is probably Harry Potter. Or Outlander.

Writing The Next Line Blogfest

3:00 am. Those numbers glowed green, staring at me, letting me know I wasn't sleeping. I couldn't. If I did, who knows what injury I would wake up with. Every night a dream would consume me, and when I woke, something on my body was cut, bruised, or almost broken.



I started at the ceiling. The fan squeaked and wobbled, trying to produce air flow. It wasn't succeeding. I turned over, hugging my pillow. What's happening? Maybe I should see someone, but who? A doctor? Padded room for sure. Is there such a thing as a dream specialist?



A branch scratched the window. I turned over again. 5:00 am. Where did the last two hours go? Adrenaline pumped through my veins, accelerating my heart. My T-shirt was damp and clinging to my back. What happened? Did I dream, again?



Bang. Bang. Bang. I jumped up. Someone was at my door.



"Who's there?" I called.



No answer.



I threw my covers aside and threw the door open. No one was there.



Of course not. I climbed back into bed.



Bang. Bang. Bang.



Maybe if I ignore it, it'll stop.



Bang. Bang. Bang.



I covered my head with my pillow.



Bang. Bang. Bang.



"Leave me alone!" I threw my pillow at the door.



The door opened but still no one was there.



Maybe a glass of warm milk would help me sleep. I walked downstairs into the kitchen and paused. The refrigerator door was already open, the milk on the counter. I picked up a glass full of milk and drank. The milk was not too cold and had no hot spots. It was perfect. I returned the carton into the fridge and closed the door.



"Hello, Megan."



I jumped and dropped the glass. It broken into a million pieces, its shard flying everywhere.



"Greg, what are you doing here?"



"You need to go to sleep, Megan."



I trembled all over. "You can't be here. I'm seeing things." I closed my eyes and began to sing a

song. After I screwed up the second verse, I opened my eyes, hoping he was gone.



He was still there.



"You're dead, Greg, you died two weeks ago. A teenage driver hit your car."



Greg tilted his head to the side. "I do remember a car crash." He stepped forward, toward me.

I backed up until I bumped into the wall.



Greg still approached, his bare feet stepping on the broken shards of glass. He didn't react to the pain, didn't leave blood on the floor.



I screamed and ran past him, up the stairs, to my bedroom. I slammed the door shut and locked it. Climbed into bed.



Everything would be better in the morning. I couldn't wait for the sun to come up.



"You need to go to sleep, Megan."



I screamed again. The door was still shut, still locked, but Greg had somehow gotten into my room. He advanced and grabbed my pillow from the floor. He forced me to lie down on my bed and pressed the pillow to my face.



Just before my vision turned black, I could see flashing lights and heard tires searching. Only then did I remember that I was the teenage driver that had hit and killed my brother.

Inspiring Mondays

In honor of working hard on finishing up Champion of Valor before the end of the month, here's a picture of a selkie. One of the main characters in CoV is a selkie named Selliki.

Hubby Speaks - The Significant Other Blogfest

I unfortunately did not give myself much time to put this together what with my busy life of supporting my writer of a wife and two young children but I'll try to do the best I can. Having a spouse as a writer has its good times and bad times. I'll start with the good. It is quite entertaining to see how passionate she gets about her story ideas. I can admit that I do not always do the best job of listening as I have so much on my mind as it is, but just seeing her enthusiasm and true unconditional love for story-writing lets me know that what she is doing is right and what she is meant to do. Her tireless efforts are admirable with the long hours she puts in as well as having to be a mother of two very young, energetic children. She will interrupt conversations having nothing to do with stories almost as if a light-bulb pops on in her head with a new idea which lets me know she is always working no matter what time of day or where she is. She will toil and lose sleep if she has to in order to meet deadlines and her perseverance is truly incredible.



But then comes the negative. I work a schedule on a five week rotation which could have me working days, middles, or a split shift and I sometimes spend up to 11-12 hours at the office and can't wait to get home to see her only to have to sit downstairs and take care of the kids while she spends an entire night locked in the bedroom trying to get her writing done. I can see the toll that the lack of sleep has taken on her and she needs the energy to be a mom as well as a writer. I have also been relegated to having my iPhone as my sole source of the Internet because our home PC has been commandeered. Even my sleep can be affected by it being that we have our computer in our bedroom and often times I have to go to sleep with a blaring bright monitor shining towards my face. But other than that I guess I have no more complants.



All in all, I think it is an honor having a spouse as a writer. It definitely has its pros and cons, but seeing her face when she gets a story accepted, a new contract, a royalty check is enough to make me forget about the negative. She is doing my name proud and hopefully I'll soon be able to go into a Barnes and Noble or Borders and take one of her books off of the front display shelf with all of the other New York Times bestsellers. Remember the name Nicole Zoltack, because soon she'll be making international news.

One of my Favorite-est Movies

I love the movie Timeline. It's based on the book by Michael Crichton. Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, and Gerard Butler star.



If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, Timeline is about a group of archaeologists and medieval experts who uncover some clues that suggest that Walker's father has traveled through time. They hunt down the dig's money backers and through their technology, time travel back to France in 1357. They only have a limited amount of time to get back to the present and the French warriors at war with the invading British makes locating Walker's father no easy task as their body count rises.



With time travel set in the Middle Ages, romance, action and adventure, this movie is one that I can watch over and over again. Just ask hubby, he can tell you how many times we've seen it as well as how many times I've suggested it and we (namely he) picked something else. Sure it's not the most accurate, but it's still a fun movie to watch. And it's one of the few book-based movies in which I actually like the movie better than the book.



Have you seen or read Timeline? What did you think of it? Have you ever liked a movie better than its book?